The Knickerbocker | Page 3

poetry may perhaps
in all cases be traced to one of the three following sources: the
conception in our own minds of objects corresponding in a greater or

less degree to those which exist in the mind of the poet; the train of
associations which his language awakens; or the moral interest with
which he invests what he describes. In the case first mentioned, the
emotions we feel are similar to those which the sight of the objects
themselves would produce; if beautiful, of pleasure; if terrible, of awe.
A painting, which is an accurate representation of nature, regarded
irrespective of the skill of the artist, would affect us in the same way.
But the effects resulting from this cause are too inconsiderable to
require particular mention. The picture which words are able to present
is so indistinct and vague as rarely to produce any strong emotion. If
the objects themselves are generally looked upon with indifference,
much less can a verbal description of them afford us any great degree
of pleasure.
The language which the poet uses often suggests to the mind of the
reader trains of thought and imagery which were never present to his
own mind. Hence many expressions which are in themselves eminently
poetic, will arouse associations, oftentimes, that entirely spoil the
passage. On the other hand, an expression low and vulgar may be
ennobled by its associations, and give dignity and force to the
composition. We not unfrequently meet phrases which have great
beauty in the eyes of one man, which seem flat and insipid in the eyes
of another. Every writer who has attempted dignified or pathetic
composition, has felt how difficult it is to avoid those words which will
suggest ideas that are unworthy of the subject. If, however, the poet is
sometimes a loser, he is also sometimes a gainer from this cause. The
reader often finds in his own associations, sources of pleasure
independent of the poet. The light that illumines the page is but the
reflected radiance of his own thoughts, and is unseen by all save
himself.
But it is in the moral interest with which the poet invests the objects he
describes, that the chief source of our pleasure is to be found. The poet
paints Nature, not as she is, but as she seems. He adorns her with
beauty not her own, and presents her thus adorned to men, to admire
and to love. It is by interweaving human sympathies and feelings with
the objects of the material world, that they lose their character of 'mute

insensate things,' and acquire the power to charm and to soothe us,
amidst all the cares and anxieties of our life. The intellectual process
which here takes place is so interesting and important that we shall
make no apology for treating the subject at some length.
It is sufficiently obvious that an accurate description of nature, or a
beautiful work of art, is not poetical. On the other hand, in proportion
as the minuteness of the description is increased, the poetry vanishes.
The traveller who should give us the exact dimensions of the pyramids,
the precise height of the terraces, the width and height of the inner
passages, would give us much more definite ideas of those structures
than he who should paint to us the effects produced on his own mind by
their vastness, their antiquity, and the solitude that surrounds them. So
in descriptions of natural scenery, the geographer who gives us the
measurement of mountains, and rivers, and plains, is much more
accurate than he who describes them solely from the picture that exists
in his fancy. We wish to be rightly understood. We do not mean that
vagueness and generality are essential to poetical description. As on the
one hand, mathematical accuracy, by allowing no play to the
imagination, produces a feeble impression, so on the other the
indistinctness arising from indefinite expressions is equally unfavorable.
But in neither is the poetry of the description dependent on the greater
or less degree of minuteness with which particular objects are spoken
of. When Whitbread described the Phenix, according to Sheridan's
version, 'like a poulterer; it was green, and red, and yellow, and blue;
he did not let us off for a single feather,' he did not fail more
egregiously than Thomson in the following lines, in which, by the force
of language, a flock of geese are made highly poetical objects:
'Hushed in short suspense The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait the approaching
sign to strike at once Into the general choir.'
The poet indeed must give us a lively and definite image of the scene or
object which he undertakes to describe. But how shall this be done?